Whats Feeing You( in National park )?

Grizzly attacks on humans in and around our national parks always make the news, but you’re more likely to be attacked by bison, or tickings. Here’s a guide for wary campers.”>

Phillip had been drinking, and later he repeatedly told people close to him that hed taken LSD that night. Somewhere behind him was a grizzly, and Harrys flashlight was lost. Phillip stumbled downhill through the forest and burst into the moonlight on Geyser Hill. He dodged the steaming ponds, got to the boardwalk, and ran toward the illuminates. At 1:10 a.m ., he crashed through the door into the foyer of the Old Faithful Inn and fell on the floor in front of the registration desk, sobbing and imploring for someone to help Harry.

Harry Walkers death occurred at a time of conflict between people and the remaining handful of grizzlies in the United Statesone small band around Yellowstone and one around Glacier National Park, to the north. For eight decades, bears had been allowed, even promoted, to feed on groceries and garbage in the national parks. The feedings taught bears to shut what had generally been a wide berth they instinctively dedicated humans. Meanwhile, the numbers of human visitors in bear habitat burgeoned. Then, in a single night in August 1967, two young woman were killed by different grizzlies in separate attacks at Glacier National Park. There had not been a death from a grizzly assault in Glacier since the park was established in 1910. In the years that followed, to disconnect the relationship between unnatural feeding and changes in bear behaviour, the Park Service and other land management agencies worked to make foods of human origin unavailable to bears. Open garbage cavities in and around national parks at which grizzlies had been feeding for decades were covered over, but the operation was inconsistent and poorly planned. Notably, garbage dump were closed before safe food storage was available to visitors in campsites, and before conversion to secure disposal of garbage was completed. This is not merely true at Yellowstone, but at Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Shenandoah national parks. Going as it did in the midst of this process, Harry Walkers 1972 death was the first human fatality from a bear assault at Yellowstone in 30 years, and merely the third in the parks history. But as grizzlies charged into developed areas looking for food, many more bears than people were killed in protective actions by rangers. After his death, Harry Walkers parents sued the Park Service, alleging mismanagement of grizzlies, and in 1975, the year the Walker case went to trial, the grizzly was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Much has been learned since then. One retired biologist told me that for years after the garbage dump at Yellowstone were closed, she found evidence of bearswhich have tremendous memories about where they got food in the pastdigging in the earth fill over the old dumps. But those bears are long dead now, and during my research for Engineering Eden, wildlife biologist Kerry Gunther, Yellowstone National Parks longtime bear management expert, told me that bears conditioned to look for foods of human origin are so rare at Yellowstone as to be almost unknown. But, Gunther cautioned me, the park now get more than four million visitors a year, and with that many people doing outdoor activities in grizzly habitat, occasionally an encounter between the two species goes badly. That happened once last year, when Lance Crosby, 63, of Billings, Montana, was killed by a grizzly. He was hiking alone. Experts like Yellowstone National Park historian Lee Whittlesey, who records an extensive analyze of Yellowstones grizzly attacks in his book Death in Yellowstone, say hiking alone can be a contributing factor in grizzly attacks.

On June 29 this year, tragedy struck again at the other stronghold of the American grizzly, the region now known as the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, including Glacier National Park. Brad Treat, 38, an off-duty Forest Service law enforcement officer, was attacked and killed by a grizzly while mountain biking with another man just outside Glaciers west entrance. It is too early to say definitively what caused that assault pending a complete investigation by wildlife authorities, but grizzliesand especially females with cubs or bears feeding on a dead animalhave been known to charge if startled by the rapid approach of people. And in a small number of cases, grizzlies will assault human beings without provocation.

As a friend of mine tells, We humans are hard-wired for the Paleolithic. Human evolution proceeds at a relative snails pace. It takes a couple of decades for our genes to express themselves in the next generation.( Bacteria and viruses do it several times a day .) So we may drive Priuses and Instagram each other on our tablets, but our mentalities were formed during tens of thousands of years of dark nights huddled around campfires, glancing nervously over our shoulders. For the majority of members of the time we have been on ground, we humans have been medium-sized snacks for a suite of predators that once included formidable but now-extinct animals such as the cave bear, the dire wolf, and the Smilodon . And nothing brings forth our inner caveman and cavewoman better than the voice of a snapping twig outside the tent in the darkgenerally nothing more than a deer ambling through the campsite on its way to drink at the creek. But truly, how worried should we be about maintaining company with grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lion at Glacier and Yellowstone this summer?

The simple answer is, the incidence of attacks by wildlife of all kinds on human beings in the American national parks is almost negligibly low. Yellowstone has never had an attack on a human being by a cougar or a wolf. And more common than bear attacks there are injuries to park visitors by bisonfive of them in 2015 alone.

Bison are happy grazing around routes in developed areas and seem docile and slow-moving, like dairy kine. Not so, tells park biologist emeritus Mary Meagher, who did the first modern analyze of Yellowstone bison for her doctoral dissertation in the 60 s and later served as Yellowstones chief scientist. One thing people fail to understand about bison is, they are not cattle, she tells. People have been gored while putting their limbs over the beasts giant necks to have their scene taken. National Park Service public affairs expert Charissa Reid, who grew up in Yellowstone, once watched in horror as a foreign guest walked up to a bison and fired a flash camera right by its face, as the animal created its taila warning signand prepared to defend itself. Somehow the situation didnt prove fatal.

Reid says that visitors sometimes assume that because they are allowed to mixture freely with wild animals the animals must be safe to be around. But she urges visitors not to crowd them. Like bison, moose need to be given a wide berth. Even elk and deer can be aggressive during the course of its fall rut, and they have been involved in many collisions with motor vehicles, some resulting in serious injury and death to the occupants. So at Yellowstone and other parks, rangers stringently enforce a 45 -mile-per-hour speed limit on many park roads to protect both people and animals. And they ask park visitors to prevent problems with wildlife in camping areas by practising proper food storage and disposal of refuse. Campsites now feature bear-proof food lockers and garbage receptacles, but they dont work if people dont use them. Every trace of food needs to be cleaned up when youre not eating, even during the day.

Poisonous snakes are present in some parks in the West, Southwest, and South, but they go out of their route to avoid trouble and are responsible for relatively few incidents if visitors exert reasonable caution. Snakebite claimed a single human life in the entire national park system between 2007 and 2013, the same death toll as choking on hot dogs. Grizzly bears killed four. And during the same period 210 visitors were killed in car crashes and 365 people drowned in national parks.

Statistics kept by the Park Service show that with all of the high-risk outdoor sports practiced in parksclimbing Mt. Denali and El Capitan, kayaking the Colorado River, and even jumping off cliffs with parachutes( which is illegal in many areas ), the rate of accidental death among national park users is astoundingly low: 0.57 deaths per million visitors, according to Jennifer Proctor, chief of the Park Services Office of Risk Management in Washington , D.C. And, the most common causes of death on national park vacations are far more prosaic than those in our Paleolithic night terrors. They are, in order: drowning, vehicle accidents, and autumns. So yes, store your food safely and put your garbage away to keep bears out of camp. Be vigilant about tick bites. But for Petes sake, keep an eye on your children around fast-moving streams and ocean surf, carry and use personal floatation devices when boating, and dont mixture alcohol with aquatic activitiesa frequent contributor to tragedy.

With all of those cautions, Dr. Sara Newman, chief of Risk Managements neighboring branch, the Park Services Office of Public Health, proposes that the benefits to your wellbeing from national park visits far outweigh the risks. National Parks are a great place to get healthy, tells Newman. As I point out in Engineering Eden , the physical and spiritual benefits of awe-inspiring natural beauty and outdoor recreation away from urban stressors were among the original reasons cited by 19 th century advocates for the creation of national parks, such as Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted and Yosemite naturalist John Muir. Today, 144 years after Congress designated Yellowstone a national park, those attributes benefit record numbers of Americans and foreign visitors. Take-home message: Wildlife attacks are rare, the parks are safe, but you, the visitor, are an important part of to be maintained that route. Conditions outdoors are constantly changing. Park Service Risk Management chief Jennifer Proctor recommends checking with rangers about your activities and obeying park regulations such as those considering proper food storage, speed limits, and how far away to stay away from big animals.

In the end, communing with our inner cavewoman and caveman brings us far more good than it does psychic distress from the occasional snapping sprig at night. After a few days in the out-of-doors we feel renewed. Our cravings are ravenous; everything seems to taste better. Our sense of smell and hearing become more acute. There is something very restful to the eyes about looking into the far distance, or lying on your back watching clouds pass across. Watching bison, elk, and pronghorn antelope awakes in us the ancient and mysterious beauty of wild animals that so fascinated our distant ancestors, as evident in their cave paints. We fill our lungs with sweet air after months of shallow breathing.

Anyway, whether you go away to the parks this weekend or decide to catch up on home projects, simply exert reasonable caution. A plenty of people get hurt in autumns from ladders.

Jordan Fisher Smith expended 21 years as a park ranger and rescue medic in California, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska. His ranger memoir , Nature Noir, was a Wall Street Journal Summer Reading picking and an Audubon Magazine Editors Choice. His Engineering Eden , covering the bear attack on Harry Walker and the struggle to live peacefully with wildlife in the national parks, was published in June by Crown and the accompanying audio book was released by Blackstone .